James Tate (writer)
Encyclopedia
James Tate is an American poet
whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize
and the National Book Award
. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
at the University of California, Berkeley
and Columbia University
. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has worked since 1971. He is a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers
, along with Dara Wier
and Peter Gizzi
.
Dudley Fitts
selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop;
Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange.
He has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation
and the National Endowment for the Arts
. He is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
.
Tate's writing style is difficult to describe, but has been identified with the postmodernist and neo-surrealist movements. He has been known to play with phrases culled from news items, history, anecdotes, or common speech; later cutting, pasting, and assembling such divergent material into tightly woven compositions that reveal bizarre and surreal insights into the absurdity of human nature.
Chapbooks
Prose
Collaborations
series multiple times, including
2010,
2008,
2006
,
2005
,
2004
,
2003
,
2001
,
1998
,
1997
,
1994
,
1993
,
1991
,
1990
, and
1988
;
his work was also in the The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
and the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Early years
James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, MissouriKansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
Career
Tate has taught creative writingCreative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has worked since 1971. He is a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers
MFA Program for Poets & Writers
The MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a graduate creative writing program.-History:The MFA Program for Poets & Writers was founded in the 1960s by poet Joseph Langland and is part of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts...
, along with Dara Wier
Dara Wier
Dara Wier is an American poet and the author of eleven books of poetry, including most recently SELECTED POEMS from Wave Books. Awards include the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from the American Poetry Review, Pushcart Prize, San Francisco Poetry Center Prize. Her work is in Best American Poetry...
and Peter Gizzi
Peter Gizzi
Peter Gizzi is an award-winning American poet and renowned editor of the American poet Jack Spicer. He attended Brown University, New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo.-Life and career:...
.
Dudley Fitts
Dudley Fitts
Dudley Fitts was an American teacher, critic, poet, andtranslator. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University where he edited the Harvard Advocate. He taught at The Choate School 1926-1941 and at Phillips Academy at Andover 1941-1968...
selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop;
Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange.
He has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
and the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
. He is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
.
Tate's writing style is difficult to describe, but has been identified with the postmodernist and neo-surrealist movements. He has been known to play with phrases culled from news items, history, anecdotes, or common speech; later cutting, pasting, and assembling such divergent material into tightly woven compositions that reveal bizarre and surreal insights into the absurdity of human nature.
Published works
Full-length poetry collections- The Ghost Soldiers (Ecco PressEcco PressEcco Press is a publishing imprint of HarperCollins, who acquired it in 1999. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company. Until 1994 the press was the publisher of the literary magazine Antaeus.- External links :**...
, 2008) - Return to the City of White Donkeys (2004)
- Memoir of the Hawk (2002)
- Shroud of the Gnome (Ecco Press, 1997)
- Worshipful Company of Fletchers (Ecco Press, 1995) (National Book AwardNational Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
) - Selected Poems (Wesleyan University PressWesleyan University PressWesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
, 1991) (1992 Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
and the William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
Award) - Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan University Press), 1990)
- Reckoner (Wesleyan University Press, 1986)
- Constant Defender (Ecco Press, 1983)
- Riven Doggeries (Ecco Press, 1979)
- Viper Jazz (Wesleyan University Press, 1976)
- Absences: New Poems (Little, Brown & Co., 1972)
- Hints to Pilgrims(Halty Ferguson, 1971)
- The Oblivion Ha-Ha (Little, Brown & Co., 1970)
- The Torches (1968)
- The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967)
Chapbooks
- Lost River (Sarabande BooksSarabande BooksSarabande Books is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1994, and located in Louisville, Kentucky, publishing poetry, fiction and nonfiction.The press was co-founded by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner...
, 2003) - Land of Little Sticks (Metacom Press, 1981)
- Just Shades (Parallel Editions, 1985, illustrated by John Alcorn)
- Apology for Eating Geoffrey Movius’ Hyacinth (Unicorn Press, 1972)
- Amnesia People (Little Balkans Press, 1970)
- Wrong Songs (H. Ferguson, 1970)
- Shepherds of the Mist (Black Sparrow Press, 1969)
- Torches (Unicorn Press 1968)
Prose
- Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee: 44 Stories (Verse Press, 2002)
- The Route as Briefed (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
- Hottentot Ossuary (Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974)
Collaborations
- Lucky Darryl (Release Press, 1977, a novel co-written with Bill KnottBill Knott (poet)William Kilborn Knott is an American poet. Knott received his MFA from Norwich University and studied with John Logan in Chicago....
) - Are You Ready, Mary Baker Eddy??? (Cloud Marauder Press, 1970, poems co-written with Bill Knott)
Anthologies
Tate's work has been included in the The Best American PoetryThe Best American Poetry
The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year...
series multiple times, including
2010,
2008,
2006
The Best American Poetry 2006
The Best American Poetry 2006, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman , and poet Billy Collins, guest editor....
,
2005
The Best American Poetry 2005
The Best American Poetry 2005, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Paul Muldoon....
,
2004
The Best American Poetry 2004
The Best American Poetry 2004, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by general editor David Lehman. The guest editor for the year was Lyn Hejinian....
,
2003
The Best American Poetry 2003
The Best American Poetry 2003, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa....
,
2001
The Best American Poetry 2001
The Best American Poetry 2001, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Robert Hass.One of the poems Hass chose for the volume was by his wife, Brenda Hillman....
,
1998
The Best American Poetry 1998
The Best American Poetry 1999, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor John Hollander.-Poets and poems included:-External links:...
,
1997
The Best American Poetry 1997
The Best American Poetry 1997, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor James Tate.-Poets and poems included:-External links:* , with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared...
,
1994
The Best American Poetry 1994
The Best American Poetry 1994, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor A. R. Ammons.-Poets and poems included:-External links:* , with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared...
,
1993
The Best American Poetry 1993
The Best American Poetry 1993, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Louise Glück.-Poets and poems included:-External links:...
,
1991
The Best American Poetry 1991
The Best American Poetry 1991, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Mark Strand.-Poets and poems included:-Most-represented publications in this volume:...
,
1990
The Best American Poetry 1990
The Best American Poetry 1990, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Jorie Graham. The book contains seventy-five poems with a range of poet-authors from a college freshman to the 1990 United States Poet Laureate...
, and
1988
The Best American Poetry 1988
The Best American Poetry 1988, the first volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor John Ashbery, who chose one of his own poems among the group of 75.-Lehman's forward:...
;
his work was also in the The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry is an anthology of two volumes edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair....
.
Honors and awards
Tate was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004; other recognition includes:- 1992 Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
- National Institute of Arts and Letters Award
- Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Literature Fellowship in Poetry - National Book AwardNational Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
- 1995 Wallace Stevens Award
- Yale Series of Younger Poets
External links
- James Tate's Author Page at Wave Books
- Audio: James Tate reading at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
- Interview with James Tate from the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
website - James Tate's page at The University of Massachusetts' MFA Program for Poets & Writers
- James Tate on PennSound